Speaker：Vernon Hsu
CUHK Business School The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Host：Professor Chaowei Liao
Time：June 6th 2016, 3：00p.m.
Venue：J1-207
Title：A Multinational Firm’s Strategic Decision of Selling to a Rival: The Impacts of Tax and Transfer Pricing
Abstract：
We consider an integrated multinational firm (MNF) who produces a product in a low-tax country and sells it in a high-tax country. The global firm faces the decision of whether to sell the product (and at what price) to an external rival who has its own in-house production capability. Using a Cournot competition model, we show that in additional to the traditional tradeoffs between wholesale and retail profits, two salient elements of the transfer pricing between the MNF’s affiliated divisions—namely the incoming shifting effect (the tax benefit of generating more profits in the low tax division) and the arm’s length principle effect (the requirement of selling to internal and external buyers at a single market-based price)—have significant impacts on the outcomes of sale or no sale between the two rivals. These outcomes are often very different from that of the traditional business environments without consideration of taxes.
Brief introduction of the speaker：
Vernon Hsu is a Choh-Ming Li Chair Professor in the CUHK Business School, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has also held faculty positions at the University of New South Wales, Australia, George Mason University, USA, and Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. Professor Hsu’s research interests include logistics and supply chain management and the application of optimization theory in Operations Management and Information Systems. Some of his current research projects investigate the integration of international tax planning with global supply chain design. His research has been published in journals such as Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Operations Research and Productions and Operations Management.
